Strong and stable… suckers!

The following is an extract from my article in the April edition of iScot Magazine.

There was always something very fishy about the idea of Ruth Davidson as the protector of Scotland’s interests. The Tories’ betrayal of Scotland’s fishing industry reveals just how misplaced was the trust put in Davidson by those in our fishing communities who voted, first to keep Scotland in the UK, then to take the UK out of the European Union. To people outside those communities, this always looked like serial self-harm. To many, it seemed inexplicable that folk who make their living from the sea should continue to put such faith in politicians who had spent three years demonstrating, on an almost daily basis, the extent to which they had misled, deceived and downright lied to the people of Scotland during the first independence referendum.

When it was revealed that the UK Government’s Brexit ‘deal’ with the EU involved the Common Fisheries Policy effectively being retained for nearly two years longer than had been promised, there was no great surprise amongst those who have their finger on the pulse of Scottish politics. While the less well-informed were expressing various degrees of shock and dismay at this blatant breach of trust, the attitude of those more aware of the realities of Scottish politics was nicely summed up by Holyrood magazine editor, Mandy Rhodes,

What was more surprising to me was that fishermen, who so loathed the Common Fisheries Policy, were prepared to put their faith in the same Conservatives that took them into it, to then take them out of it with no equivalent pain. They were expendable then and they are expendable now.

There is evidently a curious psychology at play here. Ms Rhodes is far from alone in being perplexed by the readiness of the fishermen to believe the promises of those who have so frequently and comprehensively shown themselves to be unworthy of anyone’s confidence. How is such behaviour to be explained?